Do you spend a lot of time in pointless meetings? Photograph: OJO Images / Rex Features

Meetings are one of those necessary evils of business; important for exchanging thoughts and ideas, making plans, and reviewing progress, but all too often interminably long and a huge drain on cost and productivity.

How essential are they? Could business owners get away with scrapping at least some of these official gatherings? Are there better, more efficient ways of holding meetings, or are meetings simply a business tradition that is here to stay?

The consensus of the business world seems to be that at least some meetings could be dropped without being missed.

Stephen Archer, director of Spring Partnerships, reckons that most executives spend around a quarter of their year in totally pointless meetings, and another quarter in ill-managed meetings that could have been shorter and more effective in many ways.

He says: “The kind of meetings that should be scrapped are any that lack objectives, an agenda or clarity on what is expected of each participant. Also any meeting without a time limit or that takes excessive time should be questioned. Any meeting over three hours long needs serious justification.”

There are ways of keeping meetings short and sweet without appearing rude or too abrupt. Setting a strict agenda and staying on topic will keep people focused. Training people to have effective chairing skills is also key – good chairing leads to good decision making, inclusion of the views of all parties, and good time keeping.

Inviting the right people, and the right number of people, will improve the efficiency and outcome of a meeting, says Ian Baxter, chairman of Baxter Freight.

He says: “If your meeting has a purpose then you really only need those who can help achieve it to be there. Don’t invite the chief executive to discuss invoice queries. She may end up derailing the whole process. But don’t expect decisions to be made if the decision-maker isn’t there.

“And while meetings with 40 people in them may have their purpose, neither negotiation nor decision-making are generally it. A maximum of six people works best for me. If you want to handle a difficult issue where a climb-down or loss of face is likely, do it on a one-to-one basis.”

Some business meetings take place that seem to serve little purpose.

Tony Brown, account director at marketing consultancy HAMG360, recalls working for a magazine headed up by a publisher who devised the concept of a quarterly performance meeting with all the staff.

He says: “To prepare for that meeting, he had all the senior managers sat around the table, and for an hour we discussed whether it would be best to use line diagrams or pie-charts. I kid you not, about eight of us were involved in this discussion, and I estimated that on a charge-out basis, that meeting cost the company close to £1,500.”

The craziest meetings Archer recalls attending were those where everyone has their laptop open and is working on their emails.

He says: “If I had a pound for every time someone said ‘sorry I missed that question’ or ‘can you re-cap please?’ I would be rich. There is at least one global organisation that I know of that encourages this type of meeting. They like multi-taskers and people who can do their mail and contribute to a meeting. They also believe that the earth is flat.”

For some companies, the stand-up meeting, a concept pioneered in American boardrooms, is a viable solution that keeps things timely, focused, and the participants, literally, on their toes.

Paul Lees, founder and chief executive of conference call provider Powwownow, says: “We hold all our development ‘scrum’ meetings as stand-ups, keeping them quick and to the point. And a standing policy in meetings certainly makes people get to the point a lot quicker.”

Dominic Irvine, founder of leadership and development consultancy Epiphanies LLP agrees, for the simple reason that it avoids any under-the-desk digital distractions.

He says: “You should stand up for your meetings. It’s hard to use laptops when standing. iPads or their equivalent are not much easier. Smart phones are the easiest of all but their use when standing is much more conspicuous than when seated behind a table.

“The benefits of standing go way beyond maintaining focus on the discussion at hand. According to some research done in the late 90s, stand-up meetings produce decisions just as good as sit-down meetings but in far less time.”

In spite of the largely negative perception of meetings, many would not contemplate running a business without them.

Lauren Ingram, an account manager at Clarity PR, is an advocate of well-planned meeting schedules, having previously worked in a meeting-free zone.

She says: “A former employer refused to have any meetings whatsoever, not even stand-up meetings, insisting they were a waste of time. That’s the only period I’ve felt I needed more meetings in my week. It was awful, as nobody knew what the rest of the team was working on and there was never a sense that we were working on the same overall goals.”

Most weeks Ingram sets a maximum of one or two meetings per day, which works well for productivity, leaves plenty of time for concentrating on the day’s tasks, but also provides some structure, acting as mini deadlines throughout the day.

Jason Atkinson, managing director of interim management recruitment provider Russam GMS, is of the view that all meetings have some value, particularly in an industry like recruitment.

He says: “I have been in many seemingly pointless meetings though I always still try to come away with at least two nuggets of gold, possibly a referral, or an interesting piece of business information.”

And today, with too many emails flying about, he worries for the future of meetings.

“Personally I find it difficult to be rude and finish meetings early,” he says. “I keep going for at least 30 minutes. Often the best comes out of the final three minutes, when a client is ready to make an order, or when the ice is broken and the relationship has moved on in a positive way.”

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